The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare [29]
The other children giggled. "Write one about me," begged a dark-eyed little girl. Kit thought a moment and then printed out:
"Charity Hughes
Has new red shoes"
The six children followed every motion of her quill with breathless eagerness. Kit had no idea that her methods were novel and surprising. She only knew that the past ten days since the dame school had begun had been the pleasantest she had known in Connecticut. She and the children had taken to each other at first sight. Kit felt at ease with them as she had never managed to do with their elders. The children admired her pretty clothes, they brought her strawberries and daisies, they argued over who would sit next to her, and every day they waited with delighted expectation to see what she would do and say next.
There were eleven of them in all, eight small boys and three girls, ranging from four to seven years in age. Sober little adults they had appeared on that first day, dressed in fashions much like their parents'. One of them, to Kit's amusement, had given his name as Jonathan Ashby, a serious, stocky small edition of his brother William. But as their shyness wore off, so did their solemnness. They sat crowded together on the two long benches that Matthew had provided by the simple method of laying planks on rough wooden crosspieces. There was a daily scrambling for favored positions on the bench. If two or three of the heavier boys could band together at one end, they could make precarious sitting for the unlucky female at the other end. Altogether, it took alertness and patience to keep those restless little bodies still for four long hours at a stretch. While Kit resorted to ingenious tricks, Mercy possessed the patience. Kit marveled at the ease and gentleness with which Mercy controlled her charges, her warm sweet voice never raised, her lovely composure never ruffled. Now, as the chanting syllables came to an end, Mercy met Kit's eyes across the room and smiled.
"You have all done very well this morning," she said. "Now we will repeat the first part of the Catechism, and then Mistress Tyler will tell you a story."
Mercy worried about this indulgence, which had begun by accident on the second day, and proved such a success that she had weakly allowed it to continue. Was it right, she questioned Kit, to bribe children into good behavior by these stories? That was not the way the schoolmaster enforced discipline. But Kit could see nothing wrong in a reward at the end of the day's work. Truth to tell, she looked forward to the story as eagerly as the children. If only she had more to read to them! Last week she had told them the story of Pilgrim's Progress, drawing on every detail she could remember. What would she have given for that much-loved volume that had lain on Grandfather's table! But in a week's time she had stretched her memory to the utmost, and Pilgrim had traveled all the way from the Slough of Despond to the Celestial City. Now she had only the Bible to read to them, but there was far more between those black covers than the verses Uncle Matthew favored. Kit chose the stories she herself enjoyed most, and her reading had a zest and liveliness that enthralled the children. Even Mercy was surprised, and frequently a little disturbed at the drama that Kit seemed to discover in these long-familiar narratives.
Today she chose the parable of the Good Samaritan. "Now a certain man," she began, "went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves—" Suddenly she had an inspiration. Years ago, her grandfather had taken her to see a masque in Bridgetown, in which a troupe of players from England had acted out the ancient Christmas story.
"I have an idea!" she cried, laying down the Book. Eleven small faces turned toward her eagerly. It had not taken them long to discover that Kit's ideas usually meant something new and exciting.
"You all know this story, don't you?" The heads nodded earnestly. "Then, instead of my reading it to you, let's pretend that it is happening, right now, to us. Let's pretend that this room is the